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Tech Support GAF Thread: No Case Too Big, No Case Too Small

kennah

Member
So, my pc's dvd reader doesn't seemes to be reading anymore. It opens and closes fine, but it doesn't read anything, and it doesn't show up in device manager either.

Opinions? Do I need to install some drivers I forgot about? I recently changed CPU cooler, and in order to to that I disconnected everything from the mainboard, maybe I didn't plug it back in well?

You probably knocked the SATA cable loose. Check the connections.
 

TronLight

Everybody is Mikkelsexual
You probably knocked the SATA cable loose. Check the connections.

Yep, I did that after posting, the cable was completely unplugged, and I never noticed it even when cleaning the case. :lol

Well, I never looked for it, either. Oh well, I can go back to never use the drive again.
 
Okay GAF, need some help with a PC problem. Last month I kept getting almost continuous memory management BSODs on a 16GB DDR3 system. I ended up pulling two of the RAM sticks and that fixed the BSOD problem. I haven't run Memtest 86 yet to determine if it was the RAM or the motherboard that was causing the problem.

The PC worked okay for a week or two after that, but now almost every game causes a "game.exe has stopped working" error or a CTD. At first it happened after about a half hour of play but now it happens within minutes of launching a game (or 3DMark).

Does this sound like something a failing power supply could be causing? I have a no-name 500w supply in there I salvaged out of an HP computer, and I suspect it is likely the problem but don't have another PSU laying around to test with. I also used the PC reliably for about a year before any of these issues started popping up. I wanted to check with some people who are more tech-savvy than I before buying a new PSU. Thanks!

The rest of my specs:
Intel i5 3570K (not currently OC'ed)
ASUS Maximus V Gene
8GB PNY DDR3 1300 MHz
EVGA GTX 660 ti
WD 1TB 7200 rpm HHD
Windows 8.1
 

Akai__

Member
How do I analyze Blue Screens? I've never done this before. :/

I got 4 Blue Screens in the last 24 hours and one of them said 0x18: REFERENCE_BY_POINTER and an other one said BAD_POOL_HEADER. I couldn't see the other 2, because I wasn't in the room and only saw the Blue Screen from the distance.

Any help would be appreciated.
 
How do I analyze Blue Screens? I've never done this before. :/

I got 4 Blue Screens in the last 24 hours and one of them said 0x18: REFERENCE_BY_POINTER and an other one said BAD_POOL_HEADER. I couldn't see the other 2, because I wasn't in the room and only saw the Blue Screen from the distance.

Any help would be appreciated.

Use this utility called bluescreenview which will help you out immensely in that department.
 

Haxxor

Member
Hello TechGaf!

I'm in need of a bit of help and hope anyone could point me in the right direction.

At my work they have this really lousy intranet that someone made sometime in a galaxy far far away, and now they can't really do all that much with it even though it is used on a daily basis.

Some of the constrains we have (with how it works today) is that if someone opens a document, then it can't be edited (and it needs to be). Also there is no way to search for anything the way it works now and that is a bit of a hassle as there are a lot of useful things that need to be accessed by people.

If possible It would be great if there was a way to add a "recently updated" thingy that people could just see and klick on anything they find interesting.

So any ideas, suggestions on where I could begin?

I was thinking wordpress or maybe some sort of wiki engine? But as I have never done anything like this, I don't really know where to begin?

EDIT: TL;DR A easy to use CMS that can handle documents, content update while being used by others, has a search function and that can track/make some sort of changelog.
 

Akai__

Member
Use this utility called bluescreenview which will help you out immensely in that department.

Okay, I have used this, but it doesn't help me to find out, what's wrong. It points to C:\Windows\System32 ntoskrnl.exe.

I'm now at 6 Blue Screens in total and the newest said: "PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA". Says it has to do something with bad drivers, so I reinstalled a coupple of drivers. Hope I fixed it. :(
 
so my mid-2010 macbook pro seems to be visually glitching whilst running chrome (at least, that's the only time i've noticed it so far). i'm guessing the graphics card is about to give up? is there anything i can do to test it to make sure it's that or (even better) prolong its life?
 
I'll be getting a new pc next week and it's somewhat of a budget one. It has Intel i3, 8GB RAM and Intel HD Graphics 4400.

I was wondering what kind of games I can play on that machine. It doesn't have to be on highest settings, but normal quality, with max 1080p?

Something like Dead Rising 3 that got announced today for instance? Will that be playable? It says "Video Card: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 570 / AMD Radeon 7870 or higher", but I have no idea about pc-gaming at all.
 

kennah

Member
I'll be getting a new pc next week and it's somewhat of a budget one. It has Intel i3, 8GB RAM and Intel HD Graphics 4400.

I was wondering what kind of games I can play on that machine. It doesn't have to be on highest settings, but normal quality, with max 1080p?

Something like Dead Rising 3 that got announced today for instance? Will that be playable? It says "Video Card: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 570 / AMD Radeon 7870 or higher", but I have no idea about pc-gaming at all.

That computer doesn't have a dedicated GPU so it would have a lot of difficulty with a lot of titles. That said, you could pick up an Nvidia 750Ti or AMD 260X and be able to play a lot of games at reasonable settings. Welcome.
 

Guiberu

Member
That computer doesn't have a dedicated GPU so it would have a lot of difficulty with a lot of titles. That said, you could pick up an Nvidia 750Ti or AMD 260X and be able to play a lot of games at reasonable settings. Welcome.

Man speaks the truth.

I currently have:

i3 2120
8gb Ballistix Sport
R250X (OC/ed)

And I'm running pretty much anything I want at 60fps @ 720 on medium/high to high.
 
That computer doesn't have a dedicated GPU so it would have a lot of difficulty with a lot of titles. That said, you could pick up an Nvidia 750Ti or AMD 260X and be able to play a lot of games at reasonable settings. Welcome.

Thanks, those cards aren't that expensive I see. If I like pc-gaming, I'll think about getting a dedicated GPU.
 

kennah

Member
Thanks, those cards aren't that expensive I see. If I like pc-gaming, I'll think about getting a dedicated GPU.

That's why I recommended them. :) The 750 Ti has the added bonus of some models being completely 'bus powered'. that means you don't need a high end power supply to run them, they'll work on any computer.
 

Teeth

Member
Hey guys, I'm having a problem that my Google-fu can't solve and it's driving me nuts.

I just built a new computer (AMD A6 5400K, ASUS F2 PRO A85-M mobo, 8G RAM, 1TB WD caviar Blue, 500W supply), and have been trying to put Windows 7 64bit Home Premium on it using a USB drive that i copied the iso of the Win7 disk onto using Microsoft's "Windows 7 USB DVD download tool."

All BIOS at default.

The computer boots fine and Windows copies files over. I can select my language/etc, and agree to the EULA.

It then asks me to pick a partition (and it shows that I have a 900G unused partition there), but when I click 'next, it gives me the error:

"Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate a existing system partition. See the Setup log files more information."

I can create new partitions, delete them, extend them, but no matter what, it won't let me continue. I have tried using different USB slots, I have tried yanking out the USB drive (as some sites suggested) and trying to continue that way, nothing works.

The common suggestion is to just use the dvd drive, but this computer doesn't have one. I'm in the process of using some elaborate clean and disk creation command line shenanigans (seen here: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/324687-windows-7-installation-failure-overcome.html#post2714895)

But i was wondering if anyone has experienced this issue and overcome it here...
 

scogoth

Member
Hey guys, I'm having a problem that my Google-fu can't solve and it's driving me nuts.

I just built a new computer (AMD A6 5400K, ASUS F2 PRO A85-M mobo, 8G RAM, 1TB WD caviar Blue, 500W supply), and have been trying to put Windows 7 64bit Home Premium on it using a USB drive that i copied the iso of the Win7 disk onto using Microsoft's "Windows 7 USB DVD download tool."

All BIOS at default.

The computer boots fine and Windows copies files over. I can select my language/etc, and agree to the EULA.

It then asks me to pick a partition (and it shows that I have a 900G unused partition there), but when I click 'next, it gives me the error:

"Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate a existing system partition. See the Setup log files more information."

I can create new partitions, delete them, extend them, but no matter what, it won't let me continue. I have tried using different USB slots, I have tried yanking out the USB drive (as some sites suggested) and trying to continue that way, nothing works.

The common suggestion is to just use the dvd drive, but this computer doesn't have one. I'm in the process of using some elaborate clean and disk creation command line shenanigans (seen here: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/324687-windows-7-installation-failure-overcome.html#post2714895)

But i was wondering if anyone has experienced this issue and overcome it here...

I've had an similar issue with a drive that was guid partition map. Download gparted and use it to wipe it and set it up as mbt.
 

Teeth

Member
I've had an similar issue with a drive that was guid partition map. Download gparted and use it to wipe it and set it up as mbt.

Holy shit, I solved it. I left the USB drive in until the EULA came up, then I yanked it out, said OK, then it threw up an error saying that it couldn't install windows. Then I plugged the USB drive back in and it let me click Next to continue the installation.

That's the only thing I did differently. How is this possible?
 

Teeth

Member
Removing the installation media before installation is finished is generally a bad idea.

I realize that, but it was both a recommended course of action from MS "experts" and seems to have worked great. Don't ask me, I can't figure it out either.
 
Okay techGAF, need some help. All of my games have been crashing to desktop or crashing with game.exe has stopped working.

My hardware:
ASUS maximus V gene
Intel i5 3570k
EVGA GTX 660 ti
PNY DDR3 1333 16GB
Corsair CX750M
WD 1TB hhd

What I have tried:
format hdd, clean install of windows 8
Memtest86+, no RAM errors
Tested RAM sticks in pairs, no result
Updated all driver (latest non-beta nvidia driver)
Disabled nvidia audio
Disabled motherboard audio
Swapped thermaltake 600w PSU with the Corsair 750w

Nothing has fixed these crashes. Now I think it has to be the motherboard or possibly the CPU? No artificats or errors with gfx other than the crashes, which leads me to believe the 660 ti is fine. I have monitored my temperatures and fan speeds and everything seems within norms. No overclock on the 3570k, and have tinkered with increasing voltage to RAM and CPU with no luck.

What does techGAF recommend my next step be? This is driving me crazy!
 
I've had a wee issue with my desktop for the last couple of months. After a big move, I found it wouldn't start up, and the green LED on the motherboard wasn't lit up. After some checking, I found that gentle pressure on the 24 pin connector seemed to sort things.

However, since then I've had occasional crashes (freezing with looping sound) which seem to be linked to the same issue, although usually the PC starts back up again without problems. If I move the PC around, I tend to have to apply gentle pressure on the 24 pin cable again.

I'm assuming there's an issue with the cable, but I'm wondering if there's any easy way to narrow it down to that, as opposed to a PSU or motherboard issue?
 
Has anyone in this thread installed the XBOX One controller drivers only to have it show as unspecified in the devices and printers window? Tried repairing the installation and reinstalling the drivers with no luck.

I've Googled the issue and can't find a solution.

Please Help!!
 

Elija2

Member
Okay, so I've had this problem for months and I still haven't found a solution. My Acer Aspire V5-552P laptop running Windows 8.1 doesn't connect to my home network anymore. My wireless driver is updated to the latest version but every time I try to connect I get a "Can't connect to this network" message. I've tried troubleshooting but nothing has worked. However, if I tether my smartphone to my laptop then it connects just fine. I don't know if it's a problem with my router because every other device I own connects to the network. What's the difference between my router and my phone that lets my laptop connect to the latter but not the former? Does anyone have any idea of what the problem could be?
 
Question:

Some youtube videos are loading while others are not. I'd say about 55% of youtube videos I click on are refusing to load. The thing is, this is a house wide problem; my brother in law and husbands computers are doing the same thing. Also my tablet. Other videos load and play just fine.

The same videos my sister across the country can access.

Is this my backwater ISP fucking with me, or my router somehow, or what?
 
guys, i need some help(at least someone pointing me in the right direction)


I want to run a chkdsk, booting from an USB, this can be done right? If you have a tutorial or something, a link would be nice
 
guys, i need some help(at least someone pointing me in the right direction)


I want to run a chkdsk, booting from an USB, this can be done right? If you have a tutorial or something, a link would be nice

Is there a reason you can't just run it from a cmd window? It will ask if you want to check it next reboot.
 
Is there a reason you can't just run it from a cmd window? It will ask if you want to check it next reboot.

Because it seems that my hdd is damaged or something, no matter how I try to run windows(safe mode and all that) it doesn't load. I tried with an ubuntu version running from an usb and instead of showing me the contents of the drive it said something like I need to run chkdsk from windows(wich I can't do).

Else, If there is a way to save my info from this faulty hdd without booting into windows or removing it from the laptop(I can't do that right now because I don't have the tools at the moment) I would love to hear ideas about how can I save some of my info
 
Because it seems that my hdd is damaged or something, no matter how I try to run windows(safe mode and all that) it doesn't load. I tried with an ubuntu version running from an usb and instead of showing me the contents of the drive it said something like I need to run chkdsk from windows(wich I can't do).

Else, If there is a way to save my info from this faulty hdd without booting into windows or removing it from the laptop(I can't do that right now because I don't have the tools at the moment) I would love to hear ideas about how can I save some of my info

Do you have a recovery partition on the laptop? You should be able to run chkdsk from there.

The hdd manufacturer should also have a utility to check the drive for bad sectors.
 
Guys I think I have a memory leak or a memory problem of some sort. I have 16GB installed and get a message that memory is low.

ghvqPVM.png


I have nothing but Chrome with some tabs open and Steam along with the usual apps running in the background to which I've not added anything new in some time. When I opened the task manager, it was actually at 87% usage. It's been steadily declining ever since by maybe 2%-3% per minute. Note I haven't opened or closed anything.

Any ideas here?
 
My keyboard and mouse stop working simultaneously, randomly, for no visible reason. Sometimes the mouse just goes completely dead, no LED is active and the laser pointer does dark. Sometimes the mouse blinks to life and dies over and over, like it gets connected and disconnected repeatedly (Windows makes the 'you connected something, you disconnected something' noises)
I swap the pair to a new set of USB ports and sometimes that fixes it, but eventually it'll happen again. This is now happens multiple times a day and it's not going away. This happens on any of the USB plugs I've tried, be they 2.0 or 3.0, but on the 3.0 ports it's more likely just one will fail, like the mouse or the keyboard. The failures don't seem tied to the type of software I'm using at the time, I've had it happen during normal web browsing and during TF2 matches. A reboot also clears things up, but again only temporarily.

What I've tried:
Disabling Selective Suspend in my power settings
Reinstalling chipset drivers for my motherboard

What I haven't tried:
Reseating power connections to my motherboard
A different mouse/keyboard combo. I don't have many lying around the house

It's so random that I never have the patience to try anything elaborate to diagnose, but google searching has proven useless on this subject, as there are 2-3 common bits of advice and I've tried them. There are no informative errors in the windows system or application logs to show a crash or anything else that could explain the failures.

It's a Windows 7 x64 machine I built 3 years ago, I can probably pull out more diagnostics if required. I probably won't have time to do much more than reseat power cords during the week, I can do a full teardown/rebuild this weekend if necessary. I just don't want it to come to that if it's just a software problem that someone else here can speak to.
 
Guys I think I have a memory leak or a memory problem of some sort. I have 16GB installed and get a message that memory is low.

I have nothing but Chrome with some tabs open and Steam along with the usual apps running in the background to which I've not added anything new in some time. When I opened the task manager, it was actually at 87% usage. It's been steadily declining ever since by maybe 2%-3% per minute. Note I haven't opened or closed anything.

Any ideas here?

Try using Process Explorer to get a better picture of what's going on.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx
http://ask-leo.com/how_do_i_find_out_whos_using_all_my_memory.html

Chrome itself has a ton of processes and it also has it's own task manager. Press Shift-Esc in Chrome, or right-click an empty spot in the Chrome title-bar to bring it up. You can monitor your tabs and extensions and apps to see if any of them are misbehaving.
 
Try using Process Explorer to get a better picture of what's going on.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx
http://ask-leo.com/how_do_i_find_out_whos_using_all_my_memory.html

Chrome itself has a ton of processes and it also has it's own task manager. Press Shift-Esc in Chrome, or right-click an empty spot in the Chrome title-bar to bring it up. You can monitor your tabs and extensions and apps to see if any of them are misbehaving.

will do. ty sir. it walked itself back down to 38% without me closing any programs or doing anything differently. idunno what's going on when that happens. Seems to happen maybe once every couple of days.
 

paskowitz

Member
From main PC thread. Maybe you guys can shed some light on this.

Just out of curiosity, is there any way to tell if my game performance is being limited by my CPU? I am running an i5 4670k and a GTX770 (Twin Frozer). I play a lot of racing sims (pCARS, Assetto Corsa, etc) and I feel like whenever I race against AI and there is any type of collision (which there often is) I get FPS drops. Also in Watch Dogs I find my performance to be rather disappointing (lots of FPS fluctuations).

I think I have one of those "bad" chips. I can only manage stable performance at 4.3ghz (1.20v IIRC). I read I should be able to hit a higher clock 4.5-4.8ghz but once I go past 4.4ghz I get periodic crashes. EDIT: I have a Hyper 212 EVO BTW. Max load (at 4.3ghz) temps never go above 72c.

In general, there is a lot of information on how GPU perform in certain games, but very little on how specific CPUs affect specific game performance. Benchmarks pick a CPU and then test multiple GPU, and not vise versa.

Did I just get unlucky with my CPU or could there be something else afoot?
 
From main PC thread. Maybe you guys can shed some light on this.

Did I just get unlucky with my CPU or could there be something else afoot?

Easiest way to test whether or not you're CPU limited is to fiddle around with the ingame resolutions, shadows, intensive graphical effects like SSAO etc.

If increasing it/decreasing it/enabling/disabling them does nothing to the FPS, your CPU is the culprit. Ensure that Vsync is disabled while testing this out, else you can't really get the full picture, especially if you're always above your monitor's refresh rate with a powerful card.
 

Heysoos

Member
So I just got home from the gym and I come into my room and smell something weird. I'm also hearing a chirping. Turns out the smell seems to be coming from my laptop. A burned type of smell. The chirping is coming from my laptop's charger. My laptop now doesn't turn on. :( If I disconnect the charger the chirping stops. But if I connect it back to the laptop it starts chirping again. It's connected to a surge protector so I don't know what happened. :(

I'm fucked aren't I?
 

Elija2

Member
So I think I figured out my problem. For whatever reason my laptop's wireless adapter now has a very short wifi range. I don't know what happened to it since it used to be fine. Does this mean my laptop's wireless adapter is faulty?
 

rezuth

Member
So I have a few questions about Wix.com and Names.co.uk

There should be a web forward tab for a domain in there but its missing. So I guess the only way to forward is using the DNS and setting a cname one?

Secondly is there a way to point a website adress to a Wix.com site without paying them for it, doing a simple forward or something.
 

Deadly Cyclone

Pride of Iowa State
Ok. My girlfriend's laptop died so I was able to get a slightly older Dell D630 for her from work. I had to do a clean install of Windows XP on it, so I did that and it's working. I loaded a handful of drivers including the wifi drivers from Dell's site. The issue is, the built in Windows wifi manager does not see any networks. It makes me use the Intel Pro wifi manager, which is a huge pain to use.

Is there a reason the Windows wifi manager won't show networks? Am I still missing drivers?

The Intel one will make you put in your driver's security number, which is not always possible when you are at work or in public. My girlfriend could not get it to connect at work. Even when making a profile it got stuck at the security screen.

Suggestions?
 

Moff

Member
so I have a bit of a weird problem
I bought a pc complete system by dell a few weeks ago
i7-4770k@3.50GHz
16GB RAM
GTX780 Ti
Windows 8.1

I noticed early that playing games was always accompanied with some unhealthy crackling sounds at the beginnig. like plastic/metal that expands/compresses because of temperature. too loud to be normal but usually only a few minutes after the game starts up.

now after a few weeks these crackling sounds are accompanied by blue pixels/noise. it differs a bit from game to game, sometimes its a soft noise over the whole screen, sometimes the blue pixels are attached to objects/walls. its not too extreme, if you dont pay attention you might miss it and it disappears again after a minute or two.

I changed drivers a lot which didnt bring improvement and I suspected a hardware error anyway, some googling suggested it seemed to be the gpu and it should be replaced. this links pretty much described my problem.

so since I have some nice 2 year on site support I called there.
dell support guy sadly wasnt really an expert and more or less followed my advice, he replaced the gpu and the motherboard because he apparently found something wrong there, too. I tested it for half an hour and it seemed to be ok, since it was an easily reproducable problem I thought that was it.

well anyway, the same evening the blue pixels returned, not only do I feel a bit bad about having dell replace my gpu, but I'm back to square one.

does that ring any bells with anyone? what could that be?
 

RedSwirl

Junior Member
For some reason Google search doesn't work on Chrome on one of my systems. I get an error that says "ERR_NETWORK_CHANGED." This only happens when I use Google search on Chrome on one specific computer.

I already trued rebooting the system and even completely removing Chrome and the problem persists upon a fresh install.
 
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